Editorial: Executive functions, reward systems, and addiction in adolescents and young adults

Addiction and substance-related problems in adolescents and young adults remain a major public health concern worldwide, especially among individuals facing psychological distress or adverse environments. This Research Topic brings together thirteen articles that examine vulnerability to addiction as a developmental and multi-level process shaped by the interaction of reward sensitivity, executive control, emotional regulation, and social context. Collectively, these contributions strongly suggest the need to move beyond single-risk explanations and show how problematic digital media use, substance-related behaviors, and other compulsive tendencies emerge from the interplay of developmental, psychological, neural, genetic, and environmental factors.

The first set of studies highlights the close link between emotional distress and problematic digital media use. Zhou and Feng showed that loneliness partially mediated the association between social anxiety and smartphone addiction in Chinese college students, suggesting that socially anxious young adults may turn to smartphones, in part, to cope with interpersonal disconnection. Similarly, Zhu et al. examined the relationship between negative emotions and smartphone addiction in Chinese college students and found that problematic phone use was closely tied to poorer life satisfaction and mental health. Tian et al. further extended this line of work with adolescent athlete participants by showing that resilience was associated with lower mobile phone addiction by way of reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms. Taken together, these studies converge on a clinically relevant message: problematic smartphone use is not simply a matter of excessive exposure to technology, but rather it is often embedded in broader difficulties with affective regulation, distress tolerance, and adaptive coping.

A second group of articles emphasizes that addiction-related behaviors develop within relational and environmental contexts. In a two-wave longitudinal study with children, Wei and Xu found that a more positive school climate predicted lower internet gaming addiction after one year, with deviant peer affiliation acting as a mediator and sensation seeking as a moderator. Their findings underscore the importance of school environments as a potential risk or protective factor during development. Another study by Xu et al. showed that excessive parental psychological control was associated with greater psychological distress in Chinese university students with smartphone addiction. Importantly, inhibitory emotion regulation, rather than cognitive reappraisal, helped explain this relationship. This suggests that maladaptive family dynamics may increase addiction risk, not only directly but also through their impact on self-regulatory processes. Finally, Li et al. broadened the scope of the topic by examining cosmetic surgery addiction in Chinese adults and found that adverse childhood experiences (defined as a range of traumatic events before age 18) were linked to greater symptom severity, with insecure attachment and self-alienation serving as mediating factors. Although this specific form of addiction differs from digital and substance-related addiction, it similarly points to the long-term role of early adversity, disrupted attachment, and impaired self-related processes in compulsive, reward-driven behaviors.

The contribution of neurobiological mechanisms is addressed by three complementary studies in the collection. Zhang et al. used resting-state fMRI and dynamic causal modeling to examine potential brain connectivity changes in adults with tobacco use disorder (TUD) relative to non-smokers. The results showed altered effective connectivity between the default mode and the central executive networks. Specifically, there was increased connectivity from the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and medial prefrontal cortex, which predicted increased motivation for smoking. If validated with larger samples, these results would support the view that addiction involves altered interactions between internally oriented and executive-control circuits, and they raise the possibility that network-level markers could eventually aid early assessment or risk stratification. Qianlan et al. examined sensation seeking, reward sensitivity, risk adjustment, and their relation to EEG measures in young adults under uncertain conditions. The results suggest that high sensation seeking was associated with poorer adjustment to different risk levels and weaker neural responses to reward. Their findings are particularly relevant to the present topic because they link reward-related traits, such as sensation-seeking, to reduced flexibility in decision-making under uncertainty. These promising results should be expanded upon using advanced neuroimaging and cognitive modeling techniques. Emond et al. further extended this work to childhood by genotyping two dopaminergic polymorphisms (ANKK1 rs1800497, or Taq1A, and COMT rs4680) and one nicotinic polymorphism (CHRNA4 rs1044396) in American children aged 9 to 12. These polymorphisms were previously linked to internet and video gaming addiction. Their results showed that the Taq1A polymorphism, associated with reduced dopamine sensitivity, was related to higher problematic media use scores. Although replication in larger samples is needed, this study illustrates how genetic differences in reward sensitivity may contribute to addiction vulnerability well before the transition to adolescence.

Together, these studies strongly support the core premise of this Research Topic: addiction risk in youth is best understood through the dynamic interaction between genetic predisposition, reward sensitivity, emotion regulation systems, and executive functions. Heightened reward seeking, reduced adaptability to risk, altered large-scale brain connectivity, and possible genetic vulnerability in dopaminergic systems all point to mechanisms through which impulsive or compulsive behaviors may outpace still-maturing control systems. At the same time, these vulnerabilities are not purely biological. They are shaped by mental health, family relationships, school context, and adverse experiences.

The translational value of this collection is reinforced by studies on assessment and intervention. Diaz-Guerra et al. validated the Executive Functions Scale for University Students (UEF-1) (1) in a large Cuban sample of university students. This scale focuses on academic skills and self-regulation in Spanish-speaking individuals. The results supported the scale's seven-factor structure, including domains related to self-regulation, behavioral monitoring, decision-making, and emotion regulation. This contribution is important not only psychometrically but also conceptually, because culturally appropriate tools are essential for identifying executive-function profiles relevant to addiction risk in diverse populations.

Furthermore, a study by Haenjohn et al. explored intervention targets more directly through a pilot trial of the Integrative Cognitive Neuropsychological Program for Inhibitory Control (ICNIC) in adults with substance use problems in Thailand. This program included psychoeducation, behavioral control skills, and computerized tasks aimed at improving inhibition (i.e., reducing impulsivity). Participants reported greater self-efficacy in behavioral control, although there was no improvement in accuracy rates for visual and auditory Substance Stop Signal Tasks measuring motor inhibition related to drug cues. Even with this mixed pattern of results, this pilot study is valuable in suggesting that intervention-related gains in perceived control may emerge before measurable changes in more specific inhibitory processes. Therefore, multifaceted approaches to cognitive control may hold promise for addiction treatment.

Finally, two articles examine addiction within a broader developmental framework. Using a very large national sample of South Korean adolescents, Jeong et al. showed that earlier alcohol use and smoking were associated with a later increase in addiction risk, and that smartphone overdependence interacted with substance-related behaviors. Their findings suggest that behavioral addictions and substance-related risk behaviors may interact in complex ways and reinforce each other over development rather than unfold in isolation. Complementing this empirical work, Lozano Wun and Luciana reviewed developmental models of addiction and argued for a dual-systems perspective in which an imbalance between reward-related systems and executive control during specific phases of adolescence, in interaction with individual differences, may increase vulnerability to reward-seeking behaviors. Importantly, this review reminds us that both developmental timing and individual differences matter: addiction risk is not static across adolescence, and future prevention efforts may need to be tailored to specific developmental windows, also considering individual differences.

In conclusion, the articles in this Research Topic converge on a developmental and multi-level account of addiction in adolescents and young adults. Across digital media use, tobacco use, substance-related behaviors, and other compulsive patterns, the findings point to a common theme: addiction vulnerability emerges when heightened reward responsivity, emotional distress, and adverse social contexts interact with still-developing executive control systems. These studies also identify operational targets for prevention and intervention, including strengthening inhibitory control and emotion regulation, promoting resilience, addressing early adverse experiences, and improving family and school environments. Future longitudinal, multimodal, and cross-cultural research will be essential to clarify causal mechanisms, refine developmental models, and translate these findings into more precise and developmentally sensitive interventions.

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Footnotes

Edited and Reviewed by: Tammy Chung, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, United States